


Flu Shy, Don't Bother Me

by TheMarvelousMadMadamMim



Category: Scott & Bailey
Genre: F/F, Fluff, Mutual Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-16
Updated: 2018-10-16
Packaged: 2019-08-03 02:58:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,751
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16317833
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheMarvelousMadMadamMim/pseuds/TheMarvelousMadMadamMim
Summary: Gill gets sick, and Julie steps in to help.





	Flu Shy, Don't Bother Me

**Author's Note:**

> Just a little drabble I wrote ages ago and never published. 
> 
> Set sometime after Gill's retirement.

“Christ, Slap, you look like a bloody Christmas elf with your rosy cheeks!”

That was the nicest thing that Julie Dodson could say at the moment. When Gill Murray had answered the door ten seconds ago, puffy-eyed, red-cheeked, and glowing-nosed, Julie’s first instinct had been to make a crack about Rudolph—but that was off limits. Gill never teased her about her height, and she never made jabs about Gill’s nose. For all their vicious sparring, there were rules.

The former DCI looked less than amused by her friend’s observation. “Watcha’ want, ya healthy bitch?”

“It’s Friday,” Julie motioned towards her car, which was parked out front of the house. “Bobby Ralston’s retirement do.”

Gill’s dark eyes clouded with confusion for a brief moment, “It’s Friday already?”

“Christ almighty, retirement’s really done a number on you,” Julie muttered, shaking her head in feigned dismay. Given the look of her, Gill had been under the weather for several days, most likely in a drug-induced haze. Considering that viruses rarely felt brave enough to take on Gill Murray, it must have been a doozy to knock her down to this sniffling, pyjama-clad version of herself.

“I’ve the flu,” the shorter woman announced, completely unnecessarily. “I can’t go.”

“Come to that conclusion all on your own, didja now?”

“Bugger off, lady.” Gill went to close the door. Julie reached out, easily keeping it open. Before Gill could protest, she’d slipped into the foyer.

“When’s the last time you ate?” Julie was barreling down the hallway without a backwards glance.

“I dunno…some toast this morning, maybe?” Gill didn’t sound too sure. She followed Julie into the kitchen, “What the hell are you doing?”

“I know you’re not particularly familiar with this area of the house, but _this_ ,” Julie’s long fingers tapped on the kitchen counter, “is where I’m going to cook you something to eat.”

Her voice was low and paced, as if explaining something simple to a thick child. It was the same voice she'd used with Kevin Lumb, back in the day—a fact that did not stop Gill Murray’s notice, even if she couldn’t remember what day of the week it was. Gill merely crossed her arms over her chest, mouth twisting into a wry smirk.

“Now, sit down and stay out of my way,” Julie commanded, with all the authority of a DSI who was used to having every ordered obeyed.

“Aye, Cap’n,” her friend gave a jaunty mock salute, easily slipping onto a barstool, giving her a ringside seat to the other side of the island, which Julie prepped with a cutting board and knife. She leaned forward, chin in her hand as she watched Julie Dodson putter around her kitchen. Lazily, she intoned, “You’re going to miss Bobby’s big bash.”

“Sod it.” Julie didn’t look up from her culinary endeavors. “I was only going because you were—somebody was gonna need to keep you from getting completely hammered and stripping to Madonna.”

“It was Joan Jett,” Gill sniffed primly. “And it was only once.”

“Only once that night,” the older woman returned easily. She opened a cupboard, “Where do you keep your stocks and broths, Gillian?”

“Over one, to the left.”

Julie had to smile. The top shelf in every cupboard was empty—too high for Gill to reach. She found what she was looking for and started a pot of broth to boil. After rifling through the fridge, she gathered enough veggies to make a decent soup.

Gill didn’t offer to help. Which was good, because she was generally a liability in the kitchen. Not that Gill Murray couldn’t cook—she just wasn’t good at helping others. She’d never fully grasped the definition and role of a sous chef, and she was forever trying to change the recipe. More than once, Julie had threatened her with grievous bodily injury for attempting to “spruce up” a dish.

Julie chopped the vegetables opposite Gill, occasionally glancing up to check on her friend. A comfortable silence ensued.

“Has Sammy not been round to help?” Julie finally asked.

Gill shook her head. “Nope. Told him I was sick, warned him away. I wouldn’t want to inflict a dreaded case of the man flu upon poor Orla.”

This earned her an amused snort from her companion.

“I don’t like cooked carrots,” Gill spoke up, nodding towards the assorted vegetables on the counter. “Too soggy and weird.”

“Then pick them out,” Julie returned easily, her hands never stopping their rhythmic pace as the knife thudded out a staccato beat on the cutting board.

“Some nursemaid you are.”

“The best you’re gonna get, my little invalid, so deal with it.”

Gill gave a small growl at the moniker, which only made Julie smile even more.

“Seriously though, can we not have carrots?”

“I like carrots, Gill.”

“But it’s my soup.”

“And I’m the chef.”

“ _My_ chef.”

Julie stopped for a moment to simply look up at Gill, whose eyes were dancing with glee at her friend’s irritation.

Jesus. Even on death’s doorstop, Gill was adorable. Julie’s thoughts must have been evident across her face, because Gill’s expression softened as well.

As always, Julie pushed through the moment, assuming a stern air, “You will eat it and you will like it—besides, you’re so sick, you probably won’t even be able to taste a damn thing.”

Had she been talking to anyone else, she would have playfully brandished the vegetable knife. But she didn’t. Again, that was one of those things that was simply off limits.

Gill gave a huff of feigned resignation, setting her chin in her hand with a dramatic air. Julie tried not to smile. She failed.

* * *

 

Later, as they sat side-by-side at the dinner table, Gill daintily scooped out every single carrot and slid it into Julie’s soup bowl without a single word. Julie merely rolled her eyes. Briefly, she said a prayer for Gill’s mother—raising such a headstrong child must have been hell on earth.

Once they finished, Gill rose to her feet, taking the bowls, “Thanks, Slap. I needed that.”

“What the bloody hell do you think you’re doing?” Julie was up in a flash, taking them back. “Go. Sit on the couch. Do whatever it is that sick people do.”

Gill didn’t argue—a sure sign that she was definitely still ill.

A few minutes later, Julie slipped off her shoes and padded into the living room to find Gill already bundled up in a collection of blankets on the couch. The younger woman sat up, noticing her friend’s bare feet.

“You’re staying?”

“You’ve ruined my plans for the evening; the least I can do is make yours equally miserable.” Julie came to a standstill in front of her, tapping Gill’s knee with her own. “Scoot over, Slap.”

“What if I don’t want you to stay?” Gill sat up, doing the little shoulder wag that always accompanied her attempts to be uppity and challenging. The food had done her good—she looked less like a vampire with too much blush, and she was being less compliant, which was a sign that she was on the road to her old self.

“Like you’d have the strength the chuck me out, even if you wanted to.”

“I’ll have you know I once took down a bloke who weighed three times my size, all by myself, thank you very much.” Still, Gill wiggled across the cushions, letting Julie slip into the corner of the couch.

Falling into her seat with a hum of amusement, Julie asked, “How’d ya manage that?”

“Two-by-four to the back of the head. The great equalizer, as Mitch liked to call it.” Gill’s voice was so deadpan that Julie couldn’t help but bark out a laugh at the image of her wielding a slat of wood like a deranged killer.

There was a slight beat as they thought about Mitch. Another one gone, too senseless and too soon. Julie tried not to think about how she could be having this same mournful silence over Gill—how this woman, this fearsome and fearful thing, could have been nothing more than a memory, a beat of silence on a sad Friday night, a name mentioned in passing and then remembered with sorrowful fondness.

Quietly, Julie wrapped an arm around her friend, pulling her close. Gill’s head easily found a resting place on her shoulder.

“You’re gonna get sick, too,” Gill informed her gently, though she didn’t try to pull away or put any distance between them.

“Nah.” Julie assured her. “Your germs will never make it high enough to reach me, munchkin.”

She could feel Gill grinning over the crack. “You sodden bitch.”

Those were the words she used, but the tone was the kind you’d use for three other words—soft and adoring and amused and happy.

“What are we watching?” Julie asked pleasantly.

“ _Strictly_.”

“Oh dear god.”

“You will watch it, and you will like it,” Gill enunciated each word with a haughty air, mocking her friend’s decree from earlier.

Gill clicked a few buttons on the remote, and soon, canned applause and waltz music filled the room.

“Did I ever tell you about the time Jim and I took ballroom classes?” Julie couldn’t stop her hand from lightly rubbing Gill’s upper arm.

“No,” Gill sounded slightly surprised and mildly delighted. “When was this?”

“Oh, eons ago. After Charlotte was born.” With a dramatic flair, she added, “We were trying to recapture the magic, as it were.”

“I bet you were rather good at it,” Gill’s voice took on a warmer tone. “You certainly had the body for it—‘specially back then.”

Through her bundle of blankets, Gill’s hand wiggled out to lightly pinch Julie’s side. The older woman flushed, ducking her head to hide it. Gill shouldn’t remember what her body looked like, twenty years ago. Gill shouldn’t be making comments like that, not when they were sitting this close, not when they were alone like this.

So Julie steered them back to safer waters, simply humming at Gill’s pronouncement, “Actually, I was an absolute flop. Jim had a knack for it, but I was miserable. Thankfully, the Anderson murders kicked off around week four of class and I never had to go back.”

She shouldn’t be talking about her husband, either. She stopped really mentioning Jim whenever Dave left Gill—it felt wrong, like picking at her friend’s still-healing wounds. And maybe…maybe it was something else, too. If Julie was being totally honest with herself, she could admit that it was entirely something else. But she hadn’t been honest with herself in a long time. Not when it came to Gill.

Gill frowned slightly, “The Anderson murders…that was the one with…”

“The twins,” her companion supplied helpfully.

“Right. A right nasty one, that was.”

“Yep.” Julie didn’t mention that it was the last case before she met Gill. She didn’t need to—Gill knew about the Anderson case because they’d discussed during their first case together. It had been fresh and harrowing upon Julie’s psyche at the time, and Gill’s quiet understanding had been the only thing that kept her from disappearing into a bottle forever.

Silence settled upon them as they stared at the telly. Julie wondered if Gill’s mind was traveling the same paths as hers, although the thought was dismissed as quickly as it appeared.

Gill had another coughing fit, at which point Julie administered more cold medicine. Within ten minutes, Gill was snoring lightly against her collar bone.

The telly played on, though Julie couldn’t tell anyone a single detail about what played. She kept her arm wrapped around Gill’s shoulders and her chin atop her head, even though her arm went numb and Gill’s bony shoulder dug into her side like a knife.

Gill’s warm and shallow breaths were gusting across her collarbone, and Julie tried not to think of them in a different setting—tried and failed, then wallowed in the fantasy created by her failure.

The fantasy was broken as Gill snapped awake, sitting straight up as if she’d heard a shot fired. “Good God, Slap, what time is it?”

“Ah…almost midnight,” Julie checked her watch, trying to hide her dismay at the sudden loss of Gill’s warmth.

“You better get your arse on home,” Gill pulled the blankets further away, binding them around her like a cocoon once more. “You should have left hours ago—why didn’t you wake me?”

“You needed the sleep, you daft cow.”

“I’d have gone back to sleep just as easily after you’d left.”

“You looked so pitiful, I hated to wake you.”

This earned her a disgruntled look from the younger woman, who hated pity in any form.

Knowing better than to pursue that line of thought, Julie rose to her feet, moving back into the dining room to retrieve her coat and shoes. “Look, there’s some soup leftover in the fridge. I’ll pop round tomorrow evening to make sure you’re still alive—”

“I’m not helpless, Julie Dodson. I managed just fine before you showed up—”

“And you’ll manage even better, now that I’m around.” She returned easily, slipping into her coat. She leaned into the living room doorway, pointing a finger at her friend, “You won’t fight me on this one, Gillian. I won’t have it. You might’ve frightened Sammy off, but you don’t scare me, not one bit.”

Gill’s thin lips set into something between a smirk and a frown.

As Julie made her way down the front hall, she heard Gill’s house-slippered feet padding after her. She opened the front door and turned back to her sick friend.

“Not even a little bit?” Gill cocked her head to one side in her usual curious avian manner, a playful note in her voice.

Truth be told, Gill Murray frightened Julie Dodson to death—though not in the ways that someone normally considered when faced with the word _fear_. But Julie would never admit it. Instead, she leaned forward, keeping her voice low, “Not even in the slightest.”

“Liar.” Gill leaned forward as well, a smug smile on her face.

For a brief flash, Julie wondered if she knew. If somehow, Julie had let that carefully crafted mask slip, after all these years.

“You’re not half bad, Julie Dodson,” Gill clutched the blanket around her with one hand, bringing the other up to lightly pat Julie’s cheek. “I think I’ll keep you.”

“You couldn’t get rid of me, even if you tried, you soppy old cow,” Julie informed her, turning away.

“Sweet dreams, Slap.”

Julie didn’t stop walking, didn’t let it show just how deeply Gill’s words had struck her. Again, it wasn’t the words, but rather the tone—warm and knowing and playful and teasing, all the ways that mere friends shouldn’t speak to each other. All the ways that Gill shouldn’t speak to _her_ , given what really tumbled around in her chest. Not for the first time, she wondered if Gill knew, if she used that tone on purpose, or if Gill didn’t realize what she’d let slip through, if that was just Gill’s own feelings on quiet display. She didn’t know which scenario was more frightening.

She looked back at the house, once she’d gotten into her car. Gill was in the doorway, leaning against the frame, still wrapped in her retinue of blankets. Her cheeks and nose were still lit up like a Christmas tree, but now her eyes were shining. Julie tried not to notice her eyes, or the warmth around their corners, but she knew that image would play across her brain as she slipped into slumber later that night.

Gill’s right hand appeared from the depths of the blanket to give a little wave, fingers lightly rippling in a breezy _ta-ta_. Julie returned the gesture, forcing a smile that she didn’t quite feel.

Then Gill gave her the two finger salute, and Julie laughed. There was her Gill, in all her infuriating and irreverent glory.

Her Gill. She shouldn’t think that, but it was still true. And when she slipped into bed beside her already-sleeping husband, she shouldn’t think about Gill’s head on her chest, or Gill’s voice when she wished her good night, or the way Gill watched her hands as she made dinner. But mere humans only have so much control over their thoughts, and when she fell asleep, these images and sensations tumbled through her dreams like a comforting carousel.

_Sweet dreams, Slap_. Sweet dreams, indeed.


End file.
